Mumbai and Obama

Lessons in security and diplomacy.

Updated Dec. 2, 2008 11:59 p.m. ET

President-elect Obama said yesterday that terrorists based in South Asia represent "the single, most important threat against the American people." As he prepares to become responsible for American safety, we hope he's also absorbing some of the lessons of the Mumbai massacre.

Mumbai obviously lacks the antiterror resources and police sophistication of New York City. Yet as a similarly open society, America is in many respects just as vulnerable as Mumbai to murderous attacks by gunmen on soft targets such as train stations, hotels and hospitals. Al Qaeda has so far avoided such attacks in the West, preferring more spectacular bombings. But the very "success" of the Mumbai attacks in capturing world attention and closing down a commercial center for three days might cause Islamists elsewhere to copy their method.

In the U.S., good intelligence has thwarted several armed terrorist attacks that we know about and, presumably, more that we don't. Five men are currently on trial in Camden, New Jersey, charged with planning an attack on Fort Dix. Three men are serving time for a 2005 plot to blow up military sites, synagogues and other Jewish sites in southern California. The Obama team might want to reconsider their views on the Patriot Act, wiretapping, terrorist interrogation, and other measures that help law-enforcement officials gather crucial data that make it possible to stop such plots.

At his news conference, Mr. Obama declined to say whether the Indian government would be justified in pursuing terrorists in neighboring Pakistan -- as he had suggested during the campaign that the U.S. do with al Qaeda, and as the U.S. is doing now with Predator attacks against al Qaeda and Taliban targets. The U.S. would be engaged in some "delicate diplomacy" in the coming days, he properly said, and it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment.

But soon enough he'll assume the diplomatic challenge of keeping tensions between Pakistan and India from exploding. Pre-Mumbai, Pakistan's new President, Asif Ali Zardari, had already pledged to improve ties with India. Post-Mumbai, he's renewed that promise. The best outcome would be for Islamabad itself to take action against the terrorists who use Pakistan as a training ground and staging point for attacks on India.

Failing that, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be under pressure to take the same kind of military action that Candidate Obama endorsed for the U.S. Yet an Indian incursion into Pakistan at the current moment, however justified in self-defense, might do more harm than good to Indian security. It could inflame anti-India sentiment in Pakistan, or perhaps it could lead to the fall of the Zardari government and the rise of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is allied with Pakistan's religious parties. In the worst case, the destabilization of Pakistan would create an opportunity for an Islamist takeover and all that would portend.

After months without a major attack, Mumbai has reminded everyone that the Islamist terror threat is far from defeated. So much the better if it serves as early instruction for the security team that Mr. Obama introduced yesterday.

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